Authors: Samantha Garman
I started my descent, taking it slow. Though I was showing, I knew I wasn’t as large as I felt. Still, I had bruises on my arms and legs because I kept bumping into things—corners of doorways, coffee tables. My mind hadn’t caught up with my blundering body, or maybe it was the other way around.
After breakfast, maybe I’d get a nice soak in the tub, wash away the dirt and steep my muscles. Perhaps Kai would like to…
Momentarily lost in thoughts about steaming water and my naked husband, one of my shoes caught the root of a tree, and I tripped. I dropped the poles and tried to put my hands out in front of me, but I went down hard, landing on my stomach.
“Sage!” Kai cried, crouching down to help me. I was dazed, my vision speckled. Gently, he hauled me up, his arms steadying me.
I was wobbly and scared, and I felt stupid.
“Lean into me,” he commanded as he guided me back to the car.
My heart galloped in my chest. I rested my hands protectively over my stomach, but something told me my efforts were in vain.
We were driving down the mountain when I felt the cramps start low in my belly. I moaned in pain.
“Kai? I need to go the hospital—and hurry.”
•••
We were alone in the hospital room, so no one was there to witness our version of rock bottom. Rock bottom had layers, and every time we peeled back another one, there were more waiting for us. It was deep and gritty–a sharp descent into nightmare.
“My fault,” Kai mumbled. His arms were around me, and I felt tremors pulse through him.
“No, it’s not like you pushed me. How is this your fault?”
“You wouldn’t have been on that mountain if it weren’t for me.”
I held him, my tears soaking his shirt as I tried to soothe him with my hands and crooning noises.
“I’m so sorry, Sage.” He said the words into my hair.
“Not your fault.”
“Do you still want me?”
“More than life.”
He gripped me. “Don’t say that.”
“Hold me, Kai, don’t let me go.”
“Never.”
“How do we get through this?” I wondered. My voice sounded very far away, as though it belonged to someone else.
“I—I don’t know.”
The man I loved didn’t have an answer.
“But, we have each other, don’t we?” he whispered, the thread of a lifeline in his voice.
I clung to his words, a tiny raft in a vast sea of sorrow.
Chapter 25
Kai
When Sage was released from the hospital, I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to take her, so I went to the Chelsers, knowing she needed a mother’s care. My own was ill-equipped to handle Sage’s anguish—or anyone’s, for that matter. Tucking my wife into bed, I rubbed her back until she fell asleep.
Then I left.
Guilt blended with bile, and it threatened to swallow me—it was a familiar feeling.
I parked in an oily lot next to an old beat up truck and went into the shadowy dive. Approaching the bar, I ordered a shot of cheap bourbon and threw it back. It gave me no respite as it burned my insides.
Sitting down on the stool, I ordered another, attempting to drown myself.
I had taken Sage fishing—I had cajoled and pleaded because I wanted to share what I loved.
My fault.
Always my fault.
It was my burden to suffer, and no amount of absolution would make me feel otherwise.
Our baby…
But I still had Sage. She wasn’t lost to me, thank fate, but the fist around my heart clenched. Why didn’t it just squeeze until there was nothing left? Pulverize it already.
I couldn’t swallow more guilt, so I washed it down with another drink.
Later, maybe hours, Lucy strolled into the bar and plopped down on a stool next to me. When I reached for a shot, she knocked it out of my hand. The glass clattered across the bar, spraying the old scarred wood with alcohol.
Her eyes were blue, electric, angry. “Your wife woke up to find you gone. Why aren’t you at home, holding her?”
My gaze slipped away, unable to face her, too.
But Lucy would not be denied. She grabbed my chin and made me look at her, made me peer into the mirror.
I did not like the reflection.
“You didn’t do this.” She searched my face for understanding.
“I’m a fucking tragedy. My two best friends die in a plane crash. My grandmother dies at my wedding celebration. My baby…”
“You’ll come through this—you both will.” Her voice was hard, unyielding. “You need to be there for her. Drinking in a shitty dive is not being there for her.”
I shook my head. “I—”
“Do you want me to split your lip? Tristan and Reece aren’t here to talk sense into you, and I know you won’t listen to Wyatt, so it’s fallen to me. Get. Up.”
Somehow, I did as I was told and let Lucy lead me out into the dark.
When had it become night?
“I’m about to break,” I whispered.
“Hasn’t happened yet,” Lucy said, opening the passenger door of her car. “You can come back from this.”
“How can you be so cold?” I lashed out. I settled into the seat, and she slammed the door shut behind me. I wanted to hit something.
She walked to her side, got in and started the engine. “How can
you
? You snuck off after Sage fell asleep. How like the Kai-of-old,” she taunted.
“I’m a shit—you don’t think I know that?”
“Did drinking in a bar help?”
“You know it didn’t.”
“Then why did you do it? You need to be there for her, and you should let her be there for you.”
“I know, God, I know.” I rubbed my hand across my eyes. “I hate myself. So much I want to die.”
“You don’t get to die. Too many of us already have.”
It was another reminder that I was unworthy, and that I screwed up every time things got hard. I wondered if my mother was right—I wondered if I’d changed at all.
The sharp anger in Lucy’s voice dulled. “This is awful—terrible, but is it any worse than Alice and Keith losing Reece? They
knew
Reece. They watched him grow from boy to man.”
I was silent as Lucy drove.
She went on, “Tragedy is tragedy, any way you slice it, but you can let this rip you apart, or you can cling fiercely to everything that matters. There will be more children for you and Sage.”
“You sound so sure.”
When Lucy dropped me off in the Chelsers’ driveway, I didn’t wait for her to cut the engine before I was out the door. I stalked into the house and went upstairs. Alice sat by the bed, her gaze accusatory. I didn’t pay attention as I crawled in next to Sage and held her while we cried for all we’d lost.
•••
“It’s not your fault,” Tristan says.
“So people keep telling me.” I keep my eyes closed. I feel like someone split me open down the middle, the void within me as deep as the Grand Canyon.
“What’s it like?”
“What?”
“Feeling your child kick?”
“Dream Tristan is strangely maudlin and soft-hearted. What happened to the guy that raced motorcycles?”
“I change as you change, your hopes are my hopes. I’m a reflection of you.”
“I never got to feel it kick,” I murmur. So many dreams lost. “Sage felt it though. She described it like a flutter, but not. All wonder and hope.”
“Your teenage self would be embarrassed to be seen with you. You know that, right?”
We have a good laugh, and I feel lighter. The darkness around the corners of my vision ebbs a little. I shake my head. “It’s weird; you look at yourself every day in the mirror and see the same face. And, then you start to notice the faint wrinkles around your eyes that were never there before, the laugh lines around your mouth don’t fade as quickly, your dreams have become different, but you don’t remember how you got there.”
“Life is kind of like driving on autopilot, hmmm?” Tristan comments.
“Do we wake up at the end of the road and think, ‘Is this as far as I can go?’”
“There’s not one way, y’know. There are detours, forks, cattle crossings that make you stop, take pause.”
“I’m looking around now,” I note.
“Do you like who you’ve become?”
“Very rarely.”
“Sounds about right,” Tristan remarks with a bland smile.
“I don’t think I handle things all that well.”
“You come back, though. Every time. It might take you a while, but you do. A fucking boomerang.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“You tell me. This is your dream.”
Chapter 26
Sage
Sometime the next afternoon, I woke in bed alone. I inhaled, trying to place the smell; it was the scent of comfort, relief—it was chicken soup.
Kai had come home late the previous night—Lucy had seen to it. He’d held me as we fell asleep.
Was he gone already?
I rose, testing my body, feeling sore, used, and battered. Pulling on a pair of slippers and a sweatshirt, I padded downstairs. I was cold.
Alice and Kai were in the kitchen—Alice stirred a large pot of soup, and Kai diced vegetables. I cleared my throat, announcing my presence.
Kai turned, his face ravaged by his own pain, yet he managed to smile for me. Though he had left me for hours the night before, I didn’t hold it against him. I’d once blamed Connor for leaving me in my grief, but this didn’t feel the same.
“Want some soup?” Alice asked.
“Is it ready?” My voice sounded dry, like the crunching of crisp autumn leaves underfoot.
Alice ladled broth into a bowl and set it on the table. “Chicken soup heals all wounds.”
“Even the ones on the inside?” I sank into a chair, not missing the look between Kai and Alice. Kai set down the knife and came to me. Leaning over, he kissed the top of my head and then left the room. I watched him go, wondering how many bowls of soup he’d eaten, and if they had restored him. “Are we going to have a talk?”
“No.” Alice pulled out another chair and sat down, and I picked up my spoon. Placing a hand on my arm, she stopped me from taking a bite. “Look at me.”
It took a moment, but finally I gazed into Alice’s eyes. They were old, battle scarred. They knew things that came from fighting emotional wars she could never win—only temper. Alice knew there was nothing to be said. Some caverns of suffering could not be filled with words.
I was too numb to cry, and I wondered if it would’ve helped anyway.
•••
Alice left me alone on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. Where was Kai? Probably on the mountain, or maybe at the cemetery. Was he praying, hoping for peace, or had he finally given up?
I wanted to comfort him, but I could barely comfort myself.
I heard the back door open, and then Keith was in the living room. “Put on your shoes.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
I sighed, but did as bid and then followed him to the stables and into a stall. “I can’t ride yet.”
“I know. This is Mabel,” Keith said, patting the brown mare’s neck. Picking up a currying comb, he dropped it into my hand. “Brush in circles.” He gave me a few whole apples and carrots, and then left me alone.
I stared at the mare. What did horses do when they lost their foals? They went on, because nature designed them that way. It was so much harder to be human.
“What have you lived through, Mabel?” Mabel snorted and shook her head, and looked at me with liquid brown eyes. “I wish you had all the answers and you could tell them to me. Do you have infinite wisdom in all things that matter? Of course you don’t—you’re just a horse. What the hell do you know?” Pulling out an apple, I offered it in the palm of my hand. It disappeared into Mabel’s mouth. The horse nudged me with her head, wanting more, and I obliged. I began rubbing Mabel down, losing myself in time and the repetitive motion. It was soothing, calming, like how a mother would feel patting her infant’s back. The attention was for both of them. So, I lavished love on the mare because I didn’t have a child to hold in my arms—a child I would never know.
It had been a boy.
Kai’s son.
Legacy.
Hope.
My tears came like a bubbling geyser; I looped my arms around Mabel’s neck and pressed my face against her. And because Mabel was a horse, all she could give was her solid, sturdy presence.
Somehow, it was enough.
•••
I reached for Kai but found his side of the bed empty and cold—he’d been gone a while. I trudged to the back porch, knowing he would be staring at the night sky. Looking for answers or forgiveness, I didn’t know which.
I pressed a kiss to his shoulder and then sat next to him and asked, “You ever feel like you’re trying to break through a wall, hoping to find out what’s past the grief?”
“Are you on the other side yet?”
“I don’t know. It’s only been a week. Are you?”
He took my hand and skimmed my knuckles with his thumb, but did not reply.
“Come back to me, Kai.”
We were quiet, and a contentment I never thought I’d feel again embraced me. It made me drowsy, and I cuddled into his arms. We were in the thick of autumn. It would be winter soon. Seasons changed, so did people.
“Still want that house?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Still love me?”
“Always.”
•••
“Where are you going?” Kai demanded.
I put on a jacket and slipped on my shoes, tugging my hair into a ponytail. “To see your father.”
“Sage…”
“Someone has to pull him out of this.”
“And you think you’re the one for the job?” His eyes were full of concern, unsure.
“I do.”
“Haven’t you done enough fighting? Do you have the strength to take on his burdens, too?”
“It’s been over a month since we lost Memaw, and it’s time for him to rejoin us.”
Kai hugged me. What could he say? He knew I was right.
“Jules wants to come down.”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t have another person watching over me.” The giraffe Jules had bought as a gift for our child was now mashed underneath our mattress, along with my journal, and everything else I didn’t want to contend with.